Nicholas J. Cruise, an intern at Viking Investments' office in China, posted this blog entry on June 14, 2013. The blog has a couple of photos, which can be viewed in the link below. I have highlighted some items of interest......
My First Week as an Investment Banking Intern
By Nicholas J. Cruise – Nick is participating in a Custom Date Internship in Shanghai. He is from Providence College.
My first day of work began on Monday, June 3rd. I woke up in the morning very excited and anxious to begin a new experience. I was accepted as an intern for an Investment Bank in the city called, Viking Investments. This firm was originated over twenty-five years ago in the Wall Street area of New York City. Chairman Tom Simeo, a native from Sweden, decided to bring the company to Shanghai nearly five years ago. This switch was difficult but it enabled the firm to open into a market that they were unable to reach before. Viking Investments works with both U.S. and Chinese companies through financial consulting, and the underwriting of various financial securities. The main objective of this firm is to reach out to a client and fulfill their financial needs, whether it is through raising capital in an IPO process, or issuing debt in the bond market.
As an intern with this firm, I have many responsibilities and job duties; provide support to direct manager to accomplish due diligence work, assist the team with business plans and assignments, and act as a liaison to communicate with American banks, to name just a few. On my first day of work, I entered our building in the northeast part of Shanghai and walked to the 9th floor. My first interaction was with supervisor, Elle Zhong. As a native from China, Elle works as Tom’s manager in the firm when he is away on business negotiations. In addition to Elle, our firm has employees located in various locations across the world; tech-developers in India, consultants in America. Within my internal team at the firm, I am currently working alongside two interns, Blair and Narain. Blair comes from a small town in western China, and speaks mandarin as her native language. Narain is from Washington D.C. and studies at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. It is a great opportunity to work with interns who come from a different area than I do. This allows us to learn a lot from each other and ultimately be more effective in the work place.
My first project this week was to complete due diligence work for one of our clients, Liberty Chemists. This company in China reached out to us for consulting and loan services. Liberty is in the process of creating an online pharmaceutical company, where citizens of China can purchase major drug prescriptions online and hassle-free. My job as an intern is to research a list of the one-hundred most popular prescription drugs in the world. Gathering information from various online databases, my job is to assemble 2-3 page reports on each drug. The formatting of these reports is as follows: description of drug, how to use drug, when not to use drug, and common side effects of the drug. In addition to these reports, I must come up with keywords for search engine optimization. These words are crucial because the more specific and thought out, the easier it will be for consumers to find the specific drug products when they search online.
Over the course of the week, I have put together roughly ten reports on various drugs, such as: fincar, rabesec, nemmda. Most of the drugs I have been researching have to do with common problems that our world faces today. Fincar is a drug that helps prevent male pattern baldness through the process of stopping testosterone from being converted to dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Nemmda is a prescription drug used to prevent Alzheimer-type dementia, while Rabesec is a drug used for acid reflux and stomach ulcers. The reports I put together will be the online information consumers read upon purchasing the specific products.
My first week as an intern went very well. Although we are doing a lot of busy work, it is what is necessary to complete our overall objective of providing our client with the proper consulting services. We have some very interesting projects ahead of us for the summer, such like: creating an online classified shopping center that is based off of China’s www.58.com, and America’s Craigslist.com. I am definitely looking forward to working for the firm this summer and more importantly to learning more about how investment banking business operates in a foreign country.
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